bhnyc's Reviews
218 recipes reviewed. Showing 51 to 100Sort by: Book Title 
| Date | Rating | Recipe Title
Ad Hoc at Home
By Thomas Keller
Artisan - 2009
I thought this was very good but not great. Like many recipes in this cookbook, this takes a while to prepare. I didn't think it was really necessary to saute the mushrooms as specifically as called for. Once they are in the sauce, I don't think anyone would be able to tell the difference.
This made a lot of sauce so I didn't toss the pasta with all of it, and instead, served the extra at the table. This turned out to be a good decision because the pasta absorbed most of the sauce so it was nice to be able to add more.
This makes a lot more than four servings. Now the extra sauce will be good on the leftovers tomorrow.
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Website: All Recipes
This was good but I don't think it was as good as all the reviewers on All Recipes say it is. I added spices to the candied walnuts instead of making them with just plain sugar. I added really small amounts of nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and a dash of cayenne. These were really good.
I chose to use a cranberry vinaigrette instead of the dressing in this recipe. That was really nice.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Green-Salad-with-Cranberry-Vinaigrette/Detail.aspx
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Website: All Recipes
The cranberry vinaigrette was good. I served it on mesclun salad with dried cranberries, gorgonzola and candied walnuts.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Missys-Candied-Walnut-Gorgonzola-Salad/Detail.aspx
(See my review for the candied walnuts)
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Back to Square One: Old-World Food in a New-World Kitchen
By Joyce Goldstein
William Morrow - 1992
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Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again
By Ina Garten
Clarkson Potter - 2006
This is one of my favorite chicken salad recipes. The cook time for the roast chicken is perfect. I usually cook it ahead of time so it has time to cool. Gone are the days of poached chicken for chicken salad! Roasting it is so much better.
I love the crunchy celery and creamy mayo. Tarragon is one of my favorite herbs and it tastes really good with the green grapes. This salad makes a great sandwich and also is good over a green salad with Boston lettuce.
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More than excellent. I actually won a baking competition at work using this recipe!
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I love lemon. Between the cake, the lemon syrup and the glaze, this is very lemony. I even added a little bit of lemon zest to the glaze for color and flavor. The consistency of the cake, though, is a little odd- maybe because it is drenched in syrup and has oil in it.
Don't let Ina try to fool you. In the descriptive paragraph she comments about how this recipe doesn't have a pound of butter like most of her recipes so it's 'healthier' than many of her cakes. Well, it does have tons of sugar, whole fat yogurt and a 1/2 cup of oil. Let's agree that this is 100% a dessert and not at all healthy! It is yummy, though.
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This is such a simple dish to prepare and you can do it up to two days ahead of time. On cooking day, all you do is assemble the skewers and grill (though I used the oven).
At first I thought the extra sauce you are supposed to make would be unnecessary, but I actually think it really made a difference for this dish. The lamb was much better with it.
I served this over the Couscous with Pine Nuts. Great combination!
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This is easy and delicious. Serve it with the lamb kebabs.
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If I could give this a rating higher than 5, I would! It is really, really good and easy to make.
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This is a really nice alternative to plain old rice. I use brown basmati rice instead of white and it is delicious. I especially like serving this with the Indonesian Ginger Chicken from the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.
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These are a nice light and flavorful scone. They are not too dry and not too sweet.
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This is my go-to recipe when I have to make a gluten-free dessert, but everyone enjoys it. It looks really impressive but isn't too hard to make. The berry sauce makes more than you need so save it to serve over ice cream!
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These are moist and chewy cookies. They are really good! I suggest doubling the recipe since it only makes 16-20 cookies and you'll probably want more. As Ina suggests, you can also freeze the dough and bake them later.
I'll be serving these with peach ice cream as an ice cream sandwich.
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How I love this recipe! I love that it is easier than making a pie and I love that you can use any summer fruits that you like. I also love that the recipe makes two doughs- one that you can use right away and one that you can freeze for later use. I usually end up making the summer fruit crostata and then freezing the second dough for the apple crostata (BC Parties!) in the fall. Yum!
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Absolutely heavenly!
It's not the easiest cake to make- there's lots of sifting and folding- which is too bad because it looks like there will be many of these in my future. I brought it to a party and it was devoured. Apparently this needs to now become my signature dessert!
Tip- with all of the extra egg yolks, I made Peter Reinhart's challah from Artisan Bread Every Day. Between the two recipes, you use the dozen eggs. No more wondering what to do with the part you don't use!
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There's not much to say about this besides YUM. It's easy to make- I made two at the same time. Delicious with summer blueberries. I did cover the blueberries with some flour before adding them to the batter so they wouldn't all sink to the bottom of the cake. Looks pretty and tastes even better! And I used slightly more berries than the recipe called for.
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This was good and easy to make. It takes moments to put together and then gets popped in the oven. It's a nice alternative to plain roasted chicken.
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This is the same recipe as in the Family Style Cookbook.
This is the recipe I always use for stock and soup. It does take a while to cook- 4 hours- but it is definitely worth it and the house smells so good while it is cooking. It makes a lot of stock which can be frozen to use later. I don't have a 16- to 20 quart stock pot, so I divide the recipe in half and make it in two smaller stock pots. The recipe calls for 3 5-pound chickens. This seems like a waste to me since most of the chicken ends up getting thrown out. Instead, I often make this with one whole chicken and lots of chicken bones which I have saved up in the freezer over time. I have also purchased the bones from the market in the past. This way you still get the rich flavor and color of the broth but don't spend as much money and waste so much chicken.
If you want to use the chicken in soup- follow the recipe in the Parties! book. That has you removing the breast meat after an hour so you can serve it in soup later. This is a lot less wasteful to me.
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So much simpler than baking a pie. This comes together quickly and serves a crowd. I baked it in a 9x13 dish rather than ramekins.
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I love this recipe and have made it a number of times. I don't know why, then, I always forget just how much this makes! So much more than the servings suggested. Luckily it freezes well.
The first few times I made this, I made it as directed- with uncooked white rice. Both times, the rice didn't cook all the way through despite cooking for over an hour. I made it again and substituted cooked barley. That was really good. This time I used cooked brown rice, which I liked, but not as much as the barley.
Almost every time I make this, I use half beef and half pork. I like that more than all beef.
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Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics
By Ina Garten
Bantam Press - 2009
I thought this was fabulous! I loved the lemon juice and lemon zest on the broccoli. Since I like vegetables on the crunchier side, I did not cook this for the entire time and actually wish I had cooked it even less.
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This was delicious. I used large homemade hoagie rolls that I had previously frozen (Artisan Bread Every Day) instead of ciabatta. Yum!
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Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients
By Ina Garten
Clarkson Potter - 2008
This was delicious. I used large homemade hoagie rolls that I had previously frozen (Artisan Bread Every Day) instead of ciabatta. Yum!
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I thought this was fabulous! I loved the lemon juice and lemon zest on the broccoli. Since I like vegetables on the crunchier side, I did not cook this for the entire time and actually wish I had cooked it even less.
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You have to love a recipe that has dinner on the table in less than five minutes. This is super easy and super delicious. It doesn't need as much butter as the recipe indicates. It tastes just fine with less.
It's great with Ina's Broccoli with Garlic (Barefoot Contessa cookbook). Yum!
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So- the photo I took doesn't really do this justice! This dish is delicious. If you want dinner on the table in just about 15 minutes (including prep) then this is the dish for you.
Go easy on the salt, however, because it is easy to over do it with the capers and the additional salt that is called for. This is great with asparagus.
To get the brown color that is in the cookbook photo, I had to place the pan under the broiler for a few minutes.
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These are very good and are full of fruit and nuts. They are also full of sugar, coconut and butter so don't be fooled into thinking they are all that good for you! While they taste so much better than store-bought granola bars, they are also much more expensive. It's a nice recipe to make once in a while.
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These are delicious and simple to make. I had to leave out the pecans because they needed to be nut-free but next time I would like to add them in. I used a rounded tablespoon and got about 42 cookies. Next time, I would make them larger. I like Ina's tip to cool the cookies on the sheet pan if you like them chewy. I never knew this before.
6/18- I just made bigger cookies and added pecans and they were even better!
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Yum! These are quick to make and are really delicious. I loved the remoulade but don't think it is necessary to spread it on both sides of the roll. I think it overpowered the crab. I also loved the pecan coating on the crabs but think it might be wasted in the sandwich. I would definitely make the crabs again with the coating and serve them without rolls.
I recommend serving this with the matchstick potatoes from Barefoot in Paris.
I see why the cookbook doesn't have a photo of this recipe. While it tastes good- it doesn't photograph so well!
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I love this. It only takes 10 minutes to make and tastes SO much better than boiled shrimp. The recipe for the cocktail sauce is yummy too. Serve these cold.
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This is a quick and simple recipe that just screams summer. I make it a lot when basil is plentiful and then freeze it in smaller portions to enjoy when summer is over.
Ina gives us the exact same recipe in three of her books: How Easy is That?, BC Parties! and Back to Basics. The pesto is good in many of her recipes but I also like it on plain pasta, on chicken or on a piece of fish.
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This is fabulous! It is delicious on its own or with the compound butter. Serve with steamed green beans and bread and you have an easy, yummy dinner. I didn't grill this but seared it in cast iron instead. It needed to cook longer than the indicated grill time.
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This was my first time cooking grits. The recipe was easy and delicious. I served this with roasted shrimp (same cookbook) and dandelion greens (Bittman's How to Cook Everything.)
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The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
By Ina Garten, Martha Stewart
Clarkson Potter - 1999
This is easy to make and tastes really good. Shocking the broccoli in ice water gives it a beautiful green color. Make sure to drain the broccoli well. The garlic takes a lot longer to cook than the recipe indicates but is so worth the time. I like to cook it really slowly so it doesn't brown too fast.
The leftover garlic oil and garlic are nice spread on bread. I served this with rosemary bread.
I do prefer this at room temperature or warm. I am not such a fan of it cold.
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This is a very nice standard guacamole. It's quick, easy and tastes good, though I don't love tomatoes in it.
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The name really says it all- these are outrageously good! Luckily, they are rich so it's hard to overindulge. I cannot imagine cutting these into 20 brownies- that would be an incredibly large serving. I would suggest cutting them into at least 32 smallish brownies.
It is great that they can be made and refrigerated up to a week ahead of time. It was such a help to me that I could make them on a Sunday and give them away on Wednesday without worrying that they wouldn't be fresh. I did not add walnuts and they were delicious without them.
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This is such a good meatloaf recipe. However, as with so many of Ina's recipes, the portion suggestions are out of control! Instead of making a 5 pound meatloaf, I start out by making half of the recipe. Then I make two loaves out of that. One I usually bake right away, the other I freeze uncooked. When I want it, I just defrost, add the ketchup glaze (I add in a little hot sauce) and bake.
update:
@sturlington- when I 'halved' the eggs, I actually used one large and one extra large egg. Sorry- I should have written that. My meatloaf was really moist with this substitution.
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This is a really simple dish that requires just a few ingredients. It marinates overnight and then just bakes the day you serve it. It's good hot or at room temperature. I like serving it with the Herbed Basmati Rice from BC at Home. It's also good with the Roasted Carrots from BCC.
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This is delicious. The directions from Food Network and the cookbook are slightly different even though they cite the same recipe, so I improvised with the vegetables I added to the pan- fennel, carrot and onion. The chicken looks beautiful coming out of the oven and tastes wonderful. We carved it up before I could take a photo!
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This is really good. It is simple to make and is a crowd-pleaser. Serve with pita chips and veggies.
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This is fabulous and truly addictive! I serve it with plenty of vegetables to balance out the richness. But it's great with potato chips too!
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This is my go-to Nicoise salad. It's great for a lunch party. While it takes a while to make and assemble all of the ingredients, much of it can be done ahead.
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I'm not a fan of sun-dried tomatoes in anything BUT this dip. It is so good. Like with the onion dip, I serve it with vegetables so it isn't so rich.
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I think these are good- not great. They weren't as maple-flavored as I had hoped they would be. I brought them to a brunch and other people seemed to like them a lot, though.
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This is very good but it is also very thick. We served it at a Thanksgiving meal, and I could barely eat anything after it! It's a meal in itself. Would be great, not as a first course, but as the main with some crusty bread.
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This is good and simple. I agree with the other reviewer that it makes a lot of soup. I froze it and it was fine.
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This was good. I used it with the Nicoise salad.
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This is so easy since it gets shredded in the food processor. As with so many of Ina's recipes, it makes MUCH more than you plan for. It's nice served with fish and chicken.
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